Colorado AG tightening oversight of offender’s gun relinquishments following Pueblo murder

PUEBLO, Colo. (KRDO) -- The Colorado Attorney General's office is listening to pleas for change spurred by the violent 2022 murder of a Pueblo mother at the hands of a repeat and known domestic violence abuser. Now, the oversights by the Colorado judicial system that allowed her to be placed in danger are being addressed.

In November 2022 a KRDO13 Investigates special report highlighted how Renee Dominguez, 38, was gunned down inside a Pueblo convenience store by her ex-boyfriend, Jerome Bustos. Bustos was known to law enforcement across the state as a repeat domestic violence offender, but was never jailed for his behavior with previous women before murdering Dominguez and then dying by suicide hours later.

In a newly released report by Attorney General Phil Weiser's office, Dominguez was one of 96 people to lose their lives in 2022 at the hands of a domestic violence abuser. That number equals the largest amount of domestic violence fatalities since they began tracking these numbers in 2016. The report also reveals that 86% of these deaths were carried out with the use of firearms, highlighting a need for changes to be made in this area.

As reported by KRDO13 Investigates, Jerome Bustos was barred from possessing a gun after both civil and criminal protection orders, commonly referred to as restraining orders, were in place after he was arrested by local law enforcement in the months leading up to Dominguez's murder.

However, Bustos was able to check the box on each court order claiming he did not possess a gun, largely because there is no enforcement body in place to ensure that he wasn't simply lying on the order, but he actually did own a gun in violation of the order.

In response, AG Weiser says the state is working on getting the Colorado Bureau of Investigation involved in the process of ensuring that gun relinquishment occurs in domestic violence cases. They are trying to model this work after a program that is in place in Denver District Attorney Beth McCann's office, which has a full-time investigator that ensures there is compliance on this front in DV cases.

The report highlights that there is a desire among more rural DA's offices in Colorado to have this type of investigator, but a lack of funding has prevented those offices, like the one in Pueblo County, from hiring this kind of full-time position.

Weiser says the current plan is to create a "limited pilot program" that would give CBI the "legislative authority to provide firearms relinquishment investigation support" for DA's offices across the state of Colorado.

"A big problem is the current system leaves that on the domestic violence perpetrator to surrender weapons effectively, voluntarily, they have to certify that they have done so. But there isn't the level of oversight, the accountability that we need," Attorney General Weiser said.

Wieser's report also details that Colorado law allows judges to hold a "compliance hearing" to ensure that someone is telling the truth on the court orders requiring firearms relinquishment, but Weiser says some judges may not even be aware that this can be done.

"There is often a gap between what's the responsibility, the prosecutor, what's responsible to law enforcement, what's the responsibility of the judge. And it's quite possible that in any given jurisdiction, different actors think it's someone else's responsibility. And these compliance hearings, this oversight process just doesn't happen," Weiser said.

For the very first time, Laverne Dominguez, Renee's mother, is speaking out publicly after her daughter's murder. She still feels like the criminal justice system, judges, prosecutors, and our state's lawmakers let her daughter down by not taking her cries for hope seriously.

"Why didn't they go there and make sure that he didn't have weapons in that home? Why didn't they go far to protect her and anyone else to make sure he didn't have any weapons," Dominguez questioned. "There was no follow through on them to them ordering to turn in his weapons."

Dominguez says she is pleased that more is being done at the state level to address the rising number of domestic violence victims losing their lives, but she worries it could happen again unless there are wholesale changes to the criminal justice system that allowed Jerome Bustos' repeated behavior to slip through the cracks.

"People like you Sean that have put it on the TV for Channel 13 Investigates, her friends, my family, I feel, have done more than the system will ever do for her," Dominguez said.

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